Seven weeks in the baking heat of the South Australian
Outback has accomplished something even an army of vengeful Volturi
couldn’t.

Described by one influential industry magazine as “career redefining”,
Robert Pattinson’s against-type performance as a slow-witted drifter in
desert Noir thriller The Rover has enabled him to emerge from the long
shadow cast by the Twilight franchise.

That might explain the 28-year-old English actor’s relaxed and charming
demeanour during interviews for David Michod’s hotly-anticipated
follow-up to Animal Kingdom — the film that reinvented both Jacki
Weaver’s and Ben Mendelsohn’s careers — which stands in marked contrast
to his polite and unassuming but slightly-guarded approach to the media
at the height of the Twilight phenomenon.

Pattinson says the glowing reviews that came out of the Cannes Film
Festival last month, where The Rover screened in a prestigious midnight
slot, felt like a validation “for about five seconds”.

But his next film is almost more important.

“With all that Twilight stuff, I know that if I was not me, I would be judging me,’’ he says.

“It’s almost like setting up a brand. If you get enough good reviews
so that people go in expecting a good movie, then half your job is
done.”

Guy Pearce, Pattinson’s co-star in The Rover, made the transition from
soapie heart-throb to serious actor two decades ago with The Adventures
of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, which was also selected for a
midnight screening slot at Cannes.

“Basically, he is a leading man but he consistently does character parts,’’ says Pattinson.

“I always kind of admired how he did that and it is basically the same career path that I would like to have.”

The actor has just finished filming his own Queen of the Desert, helmed
by veteran German director Werner Herzog and starring Nicole Kidman as
archaeologist Gertrude Bell, in Morocco.

The role of T.E. Lawrence, he says, was his most challenging thus far.

“Even though it’s only a few scenes, it was definitely the scariest
thing I have done. I am playing Lawrence of Arabia. Those are huge shoes
to fill. It was just crazy walking in with the outfit on.”

Even when Edward Cullen was dominating his life, Pattinson still made
time for other projects, such as Remember Me with Australia’s Emilie de
Ravin, Water for Elephants, with Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz,
and the period drama Bel Ami, with Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas and
Christina Ricci.

His collaborations with veteran Canadian director David Cronenberg, on
Cosmopolis and Map to the Stars, for which co-star Julianne Moore won
best actress at the Cannes Film Festival this year, gained art house
respect.

But it’s the character of Rey, a slow-witted misfit needy almost to the
point of self-annihilation, that has drawn a firm post-Twilight line in
the sand.

Michod put Pattinson through two rigorous three-hour audition sessions before casting him in the role.

“I had always thought he was some angular, super good-looking brooding guy,’’ says the director.

“Then I met him and he was way more interesting than that. He wasn’t
just a pretty boy. He had a really interesting face. He was
interestingly awkward. And clearly very bright.
“And the fact that he was willing to come back two days later (for a
second audition) said to me quite definitively that he really wanted to
do this movie and he really wanted to work hard.

“It also said that he was humble enough to not think it should be handed to him on a platter.”

Since The Rover had a budget of $12 million, and required a challenging,
seven-week shoot in the South Australian Outback in February and March,
it’s clear that neither money nor glamour were driving factors in
Pattinson’s desire to land the role.

But the remoteness of the locations might actually have been a bonus for
Pattinson, who would have been keen to escape the media attention that
followed his split with long-time girlfriend Kristen Stewart in the wake
of her affair with Snow White and The Huntsman director Rupert Sanders.

“The environment doesn’t really let you go outside,’’ he said
during a break from filming in the one-pub town of Marree, at the
intersection of the Birdsville and Oodnadatta Tracks. The mercury on set
that day hovered around the early 40s.
Time and distance have changed his perspective.

“I am constantly being prompted to say how awful it was,’’ Pattinson said during a press conference last week ahead of the film’s Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival.

But I really liked it. I just found it incredibly serene being able
to look to the horizon. I liked the hardness of the landscape as well.
There’s something strangely mystical about it.”

The external transformation of Pattinson from handsome heart-throb to brutalised victim took some doing.

The hair and make-up department sprayed him with a combination of olive
oil, fly spray and sunscreen to achieve Rey’s sallow, unhealthy-looking
complexion. The actor’s arms were shaved to make him look thinner, even
whiter, and more vulnerable. And his hair was shorn crudely to help give
the impression that he was suffering from a nasty case of mange. It was
a daily process that took almost two hours to complete.

Pattinson’s internal shift is even more startling.

Ironically, the actor credits his experience on the Twilight films as a
major factor in helping him find that character that allowed him move
on.

“I never really had anyone pick on me at school. I think I just
managed to skirt the edge of every different little group imaginable,’’ says Pattinson.

“But for some reason, I just got Rey, who has been bullied his whole life.

“I think it’s about fear as well. And I guess maybe the last few years,
being a little scared of crowds, being a little bit paranoid when you
are walking down the street, that fed into it a little bit.

“(That sense of) being extremely wary and also not knowing how people
will react. There are trust issues there. Being a little more isolated,
you get bit dislocated from normal behaviour.

“Rey is looking at people not knowing whether they are going to slap him or laugh.”

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